“One of the most dread-inducing things for me about the impending Trump presidency is the way he and all the insect people who feed on the shit-crust of need his being continually sheds (like harlequin icthyosis) form a secondary crust that is always, sometimes aggressively more often passive-aggressively, advising anyone who disapproves to be quiet about what's true. I'm thinking of the Horta from the O.G. STAR TREK episode THE DEVIL IN THE DARK — that's how TrumpWorld looks in my head; and TrumpWorld, like the Horta (that's what that fictional space creature ”is“), left to its own devices, can do a lot of damage to soft human beings out there just exploring their galaxy.”

-- Craig Wright, “Dry Turkey,” on his Substack. Craig and I are both fans of Salinger, and when I read this I think of that intro to “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters” when Buddy Glass recounts older brother Seymour reading a bedtime story, the one about Po Lo and looking for horses, and seeing the essence of things rather than their coverings, and how Buddy ends the section by writing of Seymour, now deceased, “I haven't been able to think of anybody whom I'd care to send out to look for horses in his stead.” That's how I often think of Craig, and maybe even more so its martial opposite: I can't think of anybody whom I'd care to send out to do battle with all of the liars and misinformers and yuck of the GOP than him. I see him cutting through their bullshit like a phaser.